Pod Clubs for Teacher-Driven Professional Learning

• In Event: Teachers’ Multiliteracies: Exploring Agentic and Empowering Possibilities

Abstract

The field of education research takes time and expertise to navigate. Identifying search terms, navigating the reputability of sources, discerning academic writing structures, and making time to understand research limits practitioners' access to new knowledge. With various topics and show formats, podcasts provide opportunities to hear ideas explained, free from formalized writing structures, and available to anyone with an internet connection.
In the field of professional learning, Podcasts offer legitimate peripheral participation for all types of teachers in a self-directed way (Lave & Wenger, 1991). We apply Lave and Wenger’s Communities of Practice (1991) framework to the topic of podcasts for professional learning to explore situated learning in our current times. Podcasts allow teachers to select and listen to episodes as a form of professional learning. As teachers listen to episodes, they may connect to both experts (or podcast guests) and other practitioners. Teachers' podcast listening does not exist in isolation. Teachers are part of a broader system of relations “which arise out of and are reproduced and developed within social communities” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53). Therefore, Podcasts can become a multimodal text that teachers share in their communities of practice.
In this case study (Stake, 1995), we facilitated a focus group for teachers to listen to tailored podcast playlists and discuss what they heard in an informal and collegial space we called a ‘Pod Club’. Members of our research team host and produce a scholarly podcast specifically designed to facilitate translating education research to practitioners, a central purpose of our Pod Club. In our study, we took a direct interpretation approach to understand: (1) In what ways may a scholarly podcast in education research impact teachers’ voiced ideas? (2) How does a Pod Club experience help to shape teachers’ professional conversations?
Over three weeks, four teacher participants in the study listened to two podcast episodes each week. Following the asynchronous listening sessions, the teacher participants met for group discussions. The Pod Club meetings provided a space for the teachers to reflect on and discuss the insights, ideas, and implications presented in the podcast episodes within the context of their teaching experiences and practices. Each meeting was video recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were analyzed for key ideas responding to our research questions, seeking to understand the case of this Pod Club and its influence on teachers’ professional conversations.
In these Pod Clubs, we found that teachers quoted podcast episodes to start conversations and voice professional knowledge. Also, they used podcast content to reframe experiences as they reconsidered personal and professional learning. The Pod Club became a space for the recontextualization of teachers’ shared context and rehearsal for collective advocacy. Participants also expressed a familiarity with the researchers featured in the podcast episodes, as they quoted their ideas and referred to the guest researchers by first names. Through layers of multimodal intertextual connections, the Pod Club afforded participants the opportunity to develop their community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and reimagine possibilities.

Authors

• Lindsay E. Persohn, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee

• Leah Burger, University of South Florida

• Kristin Valle Geren, University of South Florida